Doubts over Stone conviction

Two key witnesses against Michael Stone, the
man convicted of murdering mother and daughter Lin and Megan Russell, were paid
police informants, it was claimed last night.

One of the witnesses, who both told the jury that Stone confessed to the
killings while in prison, said they had been in the pay of Kent Police. The
allegation comes only days before Stone begins his appeal against conviction.

Barry Thompson was the witness who told Maidstone Crown Court back in 1998
that Stone had described his failure to kill Megan's sister Josie as a
'mistake'.

It is Thompson who has now told the Daily Mail in a recorded conversation
that he was an informer at the time. He said that fellow informer Damien Daley
was also regularly used by police.

And he expressed fears that this information would be suppressed during
Stone's appeal next month.

Last night Stone's solicitor Derek Hayward said the revelation could be a
vital breakthrough. 'This information is potentially of crucial importance in
the case and we will certainly be raising these issues at the appeal hearing,'
he said.

The dramatic development follows a series of articles in the Daily Mail over
the last two years casting doubt on the life sentence imposed on Stone in
October 1998 for the murders of Dr Russell and six-year-old Megan, who were
bludgeoned over the head with a hammer as they walked home through the Kent
countryside in July 1996.

Nine-year-old Josie was also attacked and suffered massive head injuries but
made a recovery, and today lives with her father, Dr Shaun Russell, in North
Wales.

Last night Kent Police refused to discuss the new claims. They centre on
confessions that were allegedly heard by Daley and Thompson from Stone while he
was on remand in prison awaiting trial.

Stone, a petty thief and drug addict, has always maintained the confessions
were bogus.

Thompson, 35, who has been convicted of deception and intimidating witnesses,
told the murder trial that Stone had threatened him at Emley jail, and had said
he had made a 'mistake' in not killing Josie.

But just days after the verdict Thompson told a national newspaper that his
testimony had been a pack of lies.

Daley, 25, was said to have met Stone in Canterbury prison.

He said that the pair spoke to each other through a cracked drainpipe and
told the court that Stone had described the Russells as 'whores and bitches' and
how the murder had sexually aroused him.

Another prison witness, Mark Jennings, also told the jury that he heard a
confession from Stone. But it later emerged that his family been paid £5,000 in
advance of the verdict by a national newspaper with a promise of a further
£10,000 if Stone was found guilty.

When asked by the Mail why he stopped being an informer, Thompson said: 'It's
Stone. I didn't believe it in the first place. I never thought he'd done it. The
evidence proves it. There was nothing to point he'd done it. Nothing at all.'

Stone's supporters have pointed to a lack of forensic evidence and eyewitness
accounts placing him at the murder scene. They claim that hairs from Josie's
beach shoes and red fibres found on her mother's body could not be linked to
Stone.

Neither was blood from any of the Russells found on him.

Last night a third man who made statements to the Russell murder squad also
said he was an unpaid police informer.

The man, known as Prisoner X, told detectives that Stone had confessed to the
murders while remanded on the hospital wing at Belmarsh Prison in August 1997.

'I was registered as an informer at Romford police station in 1989,' he said.
'My name was Top Gun.'

Prisoner X was nearing the end of a two-and-a-half year sentence for
deception when he met Stone. He alleges that on his day of release he was taken
to the office of the prison hospital wing by a prison officer.

'She had two SIR sheets (Security Information Reports), which were covered in
writing,' said X. She asked "Is this a true account of your conversations with
Michael Stone?" 'I said "Yes". I didn't bother to read them, I just signed
them.'

As a result of his cooperation, X claims that outstanding charges against him
were then dropped. In the event he was never called as a witness.